Modern telecommunications networks offer users a vast array of options for connecting and interacting with one another. In addition to choices provided by telecommunications providers themselves, users can now utilize a variety of independently developed products and services that run ‘on top’ of the infrastructure maintained by the telecommunications industry. These independently developed products and services are commonly referred to as over-the-top (OTT) services because they are not developed with a specific telecommunications provider's network in mind, but rather are designed to interconnect users via a provider-independent platform.
While the rise of OTT services has provided users with increased flexibility by allowing them to separate the manner in which they interact from their respective telecommunications providers, it has also presented new challenges to the telecommunications providers that maintain the networks over which OTT services run. For example, provider revenue models that charge based on the utilization of provider services (e.g., price per voice minute, price per text message) may be incompatible with OTT service platforms that utilize the provider's infrastructure to provide roughly equivalent services at ‘no cost’ to the consumer (e.g., peer-to-peer voice services, instant messaging).
Despite the challenges presented to network providers by the rise in popularity of OTT services, the paradigm shift also presents telecommunications providers with new opportunities. Like other providers, OTT service providers are subject to the ‘network effect.’ As a result, OTT service providers are primarily concerned with expanding their user base and hesitant to develop functionality for interacting with other OTT service providers. Often OTT service providers limit their interoperability to assisting users in switching from a competing platform, i.e., by providing a new user with the option to import contact information from another OTT service platform. Unlike their OTT service provider counterparts, telecommunications providers are ideally situated between their end users and the intersection of these various OTT service platforms. From this vantage point telecommunications providers can distinguish themselves by developing and implementing functionality that leverages information from multiple OTT service platforms.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods, systems, and computer readable media for affecting user associations in OTT service platforms.